Things to Do in Maine: 50 Ideas Worth the Drive

The five that define the state

If you only do a handful of things, do these. Each is a different Maine, and between them they cover the coast, the mountains, the working waterfront and the table.

1. Acadia National Park. At 4.9 from 24,003 reviews it is not just the highest-volume place in our data, it is higher-volume than the next fifteen attractions combined. Granite headlands, carriage roads, a summit you can drive. Plan two full days minimum.
2. Portland Head Light. The lighthouse everyone pictures when they picture Maine, on a headland in Cape Elizabeth at 4.8 from 16,744 reviews. Free to walk the grounds, twenty minutes from downtown Portland, best in the first hour of daylight.
3. A lobster boat trip. Not a restaurant — a boat. Lucky Catch Cruises out of Portland (4.9 from 585 reviews) hauls real traps with you aboard. It reframes every lobster roll you eat afterwards.
4. Katahdin from Baxter State Park. Maine's highest mountain and the northern end of the Appalachian Trail. Even the scenic overlook on the approach road pulls 4.8 from 782 reviews, which tells you what the mountain itself does to people.
5. One long slow harbor evening. Camden, Stonington, Boothbay or Bar Harbor — pick one, arrive at five, watch the boats come in, eat late. This is the thing people actually remember.

On the water

Maine is best seen from three feet above sea level. The boat operators in our data score unusually high, partly because a bad one does not survive a season here.

Two things govern every boat day. The first is fog, which rolls in without warning on the outer coast and cancels trips at an hour's notice; book a boat for early in your stay so a cancellation has somewhere to go. The second is the tide, which runs nine to eleven feet on most of this coast and more than twenty in Cobscook Bay at the far eastern end. It dictates when land bridges are walkable, when sandbars appear, and when a harbor is mud.

6. Windjammer sailing from Camden or Rockland. Schooner Surprise in Camden holds a perfect 5.0 from 221 reviews. Day sails run a couple of hours; multi-day cruises sleep aboard and go where the wind allows.
7. Puffin cruise from Boothbay or Rockland. Cap'n Fish's Cruises in Boothbay Harbor (4.7 from 2,887 reviews) runs the best-known trips. Puffins are ashore for a limited window in early summer — go too late and you get an empty rock.
8. Whale watch from Bar Harbor. Long trips, cold even in August, and genuinely weather-dependent. Bring more layers than you think and take the earlier sailing when there is a choice.
9. Sea kayak the Casco Bay islands. Sheltered water, short crossings, and a skyline behind you.
10. Ride the mailboat run from Portland. Three hours, no commentary worth speaking of, and the best value on the coast.
11. Take the ferry to Peaks Island and rent a bike. The loop road takes an hour, the back shore is empty, and you are back for dinner.
12. Sail Somes Sound. The deep fjard cut into Mount Desert Island, and the quietest water on that island in August.
13. Whitewater raft the Kennebec or Dead River. Dam-released, so the water level is scheduled rather than left to the weather.
14. Paddle Moosehead Lake. Forty miles of it, with Mount Kineo's cliff rising straight out of the water halfway up.
15. Walk out to Bar Island at low tide. The land bridge from Bar Harbor (4.8 from 553 reviews) is exposed for a few hours either side of low water. Read the tide table, not the crowd — people get cut off every summer.

Lighthouses worth the drive

Maine has dozens; four or five are genuinely worth planning a day around. These are the highest-rated in our data with the review volume to back them up.

Lighthouse	Town	Rating	Reviews	Worth it for
Portland Head Light	Cape Elizabeth	4.8	16,744	The classic view, and a real park around it
Bass Harbor Head Light	Tremont	4.4	4,616	Sunset from the rocks below, if you get parking
Pemaquid Point Lighthouse	Bristol	4.8	3,243	The rock slabs, which beat the light itself
Owls Head Lighthouse	Owls Head	4.8	1,726	A short woods walk and a working bay
West Quoddy Head	Lubec	4.9	1,488	Easternmost point in the country
Marshall Point Lighthouse	St. George	4.8	1,458	The wooden walkway out to the tower
Rockland Breakwater Light	Rockland	4.8	1,318	The mile of granite you walk to reach it
Nubble Light	York	4.9	631	The most photographed rock in Maine

16. Walk the Rockland Breakwater. A mile out on uneven granite blocks with water on both sides. Not for unsteady footing, and check the wind.
17. See Bass Harbor Head at sunset. Its 4.4 rating is the lowest on this table for one reason: the parking lot is tiny and the viewing area is small, so it feels like a queue. Go at the shoulders of the day.
18. Do the Pemaquid Point slabs. The tilted rock formations below the light are the actual attraction.
19. Stand at Nubble Light in York. 4.9 from 631 reviews, no admission, and a parking lot directly opposite.
20. Drive to West Quoddy Head. Five hours from Portland and worth it exactly once — the red-and-white bands, the cliff walk, and the sense of running out of country.

Our full lighthouse guide covers which ones you can climb and which are view-only.

Hikes, summits and short walks

Maine hiking splits into three tiers: coastal walks anyone can do, half-day summits with real views, and mountains that need a plan.

21. The Beehive Trail in Acadia. 4.9 from 583 reviews, and the most exciting hour of hiking in the state — iron rungs and ladders on an exposed cliff. Not for anyone uneasy with heights or wet rock.
22. Ocean Path, Acadia. Flat, two miles, and it links Sand Beach, Thunder Hole and Otter Cliff. The best effort-to-view ratio in the park.
23. Cadillac Mountain. 4.9 from 1,528 reviews. You can drive it, but summit-road vehicle reservations are required in the warm months and they go fast.
24. Mount Battie in Camden Hills State Park. The tower (4.8 from 819 reviews) looks over Penobscot Bay; the park itself pulls 4.7 from 2,069. Drive up or walk the mile.
25. Bradbury Mountain near Freeport. 4.7 from 1,318 reviews, twenty minutes to the top, and the best hawk-watching in southern Maine in fall.
26. Mount Agamenticus in York. 4.8 from 897 reviews. A drivable summit near the beaches with a view to the ocean and, on a clear day, the White Mountains.
27. Morse Mountain to Seawall Beach. 4.9 from 107 reviews. A two-mile walk over a hill that ends at an undeveloped barrier beach with no facilities of any kind. Parking is severely limited — arrive early or not at all.
28. Precipice or Gorham Mountain in Acadia. Gorham (4.9 from 274 reviews) is the sane alternative when Precipice is closed for nesting falcons, which it usually is in early summer.
29. Katahdin's Knife Edge. A mile-long ridge with drops on both sides. Serious, exposed, and no place to be caught by weather.
30. Wolfe's Neck Woods in Freeport. 4.8 from 1,431 reviews. Easy shoreline loops on the Casco Bay side, good with kids or a stroller.

If Acadia is your focus, the Acadia hiking guide ranks the trails by difficulty rather than by view.

Beaches

Maine's water is cold — mid-sixties in August on the southern beaches, colder as you go north and east. People swim anyway.

31. Long Sands Beach, York. 4.7 from 1,281 reviews. Almost two miles of sand with a road and a seawall behind it.
32. Popham Beach State Park. 4.8 from 2,104 reviews and the most dramatic beach in the state — sandbars appear and vanish with the tide, and the lot fills by mid-morning in July.
33. Reid State Park, Georgetown. 4.8 from 1,563 reviews. Dunes, a lagoon warm enough for small children, and fewer people than Popham.
34. Sand Beach, Acadia. 4.8 from 970 reviews. Roughly 55 degrees in August, which is the point.
35. Ogunquit Beach and Footbridge Beach. Three miles of sand backed by a tidal river; Footbridge (4.8 from 742 reviews) is the quieter end.

The complete beaches guide covers parking, tides and which ones have lifeguards.

Eat like you came here on purpose

Seafood here is seasonal in a way that changes what is good on a given week. Soft-shell lobsters arrive in mid-summer and are sweeter and easier to pick than the hard-shell lobsters that dominate the shoulder seasons. Oysters are at their best in the colder months. Wild blueberries are a late-summer crop and nothing else. Order to the calendar and you eat better.

36. A lobster roll, done both ways. Cold with mayo, or warm with butter. Eat one of each on different days and pick a side. Our lobster roll guide ranks the best in the state.
37. Fried clams from a shack with a screen door. Whole bellies, not strips. Anything else is a compromise.
38. Oysters from the Damariscotta River. The estuary north of the harbor produces some of the East Coast's best, and you can eat them within sight of where they grew.
39. A lobster pound meal beside the water. Paper plates, a picnic table, a bib you will need.
40. Blueberry pie in August. Maine's wild lowbush berries are tiny and intense — nothing like the cultivated kind.
41. Buy from a working fish market. Harbor Fish Market in Portland (4.7 from 1,537 reviews) has been the standard for decades. Get lobsters packed for travel.
42. Portland's restaurant scene, properly. Book ahead — the best rooms in the Old Port fill weeks out in summer. The restaurant directory is a reasonable starting point.
43. A brewery afternoon. Portland has the density, but Bangor, Brewer and Bar Harbor all have breweries with real kitchens attached.

Museums, mansions and rainy days

You will get at least one bad-weather day. These are the ones that hold up.

44. Portland Museum of Art. 4.6 from 2,232 reviews, with a Winslow Homer collection and the artist's Prouts Neck studio reachable by tour.
45. Maine Maritime Museum, Bath. 4.7 from 1,489 reviews. Built on a former shipyard, with the Bath Iron Works cranes still working across the water.
46. Owls Head Transportation Museum. 4.8 from 1,000 reviews. Aircraft and cars that are flown and driven rather than roped off.
47. Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland. 4.6 from 189 reviews, and the reason Rockland became an art town — three generations of Wyeths in one building.
48. Victoria Mansion, Portland. 4.6 from 1,197 reviews. An 1860s summer house with almost all of its original interiors intact, which is rare anywhere.
49. Seal Cove Auto Museum on Mount Desert Island. 4.9 from 477 reviews — brass-era cars, and the highest-rated museum in our data.
50. Seashore Trolley Museum, Kennebunkport. 4.7 from 1,032 reviews, and you ride a restored streetcar rather than just looking at one.

Beyond the fifty: more that earn their ratings

A few more that consistently earn their ratings: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay (4.8 from 7,005 reviews) is the most-reviewed attraction on the coast outside Acadia, and its children's garden is genuinely good. Fort Knox and the Penobscot Narrows Observatory (4.8 from 3,270 reviews) pairs a granite fort you can get lost in with an elevator up a bridge tower. The Maine Wildlife Park in Gray (4.7 from 2,495 reviews) houses animals that cannot be released to the wild — the reliable place to actually see a moose. Thunder Hole in Acadia (4.6 from 3,222 reviews) only performs at mid-tide with a swell running; at slack water it is a wet hole in the rock, which explains every disappointed review it has.

Add the Marginal Way cliff walk in Ogunquit, the Ogunquit Playhouse (4.8 from 1,498 reviews) for summer theatre, Fort McClary in Kittery (4.7 from 1,308 reviews), the Androscoggin Swinging Bridge at Topsham (4.7 from 892 reviews), the Rachel Carson refuge trails near Kennebunk (4.7 from 2,011 reviews), and the Project Puffin Visitor Center in Rockland (4.9 from 99 reviews) for the science behind the boat trips.

Inland and north

Two-thirds of Maine is not the coast, and it empties out fast once you pass Bangor.

• Ski Sunday River. 4.6 from 3,081 reviews and the busiest attraction in western Maine, winter or summer.
• Ride the Katahdin steamboat on Moosehead Lake. The Moosehead Marine Museum (4.6 from 253 reviews) operates her out of Greenville.
• Drive Grafton Notch. Waterfalls and gorges a short walk from the road, on the way to New Hampshire.
• Look for moose at dawn near Rangeley or Greenville. Dawn and dusk, bogs rather than roads, and never with your headlights on high beam.
• Camden Snow Bowl in winter. 4.6 from 446 reviews, and the only ski hill in New England with an ocean view from the summit.
• The Desert of Maine in Freeport. 4.5 from 1,145 reviews. A glacial sand deposit exposed by two centuries of bad farming — odd, small, and better than it sounds.

When to do what

Season	What is open	What it is best for
Late spring	Most coastal businesses opening, park roads clearing	Lighthouses and towns without crowds; puffin trips begin
Summer	Everything	Beaches, boats, islands. Also every parking problem in this article
Early fall	Nearly everything, thinning through October	Foliage, hiking, the best weather of the year
Late fall	Coastal towns closing week by week	Empty trails, cheap rooms, short days
Winter	Mountain resorts busy, coast quiet	Skiing, snowshoeing, Portland restaurants without a wait

Five practical things that decide how the day goes

• Parking is the real constraint. Popham, Morse Mountain, Bass Harbor Head and most Acadia trailheads run out of spaces long before they run out of appeal. Before nine or after four is not a preference, it is the plan.
• Reservations are structural, not optional. The Cadillac Mountain summit road, the better Portland dining rooms and most windjammer cabins all release on rolling windows and clear quickly. Check each operator's own site for the current window.
• Cell coverage stops mattering north of Bangor. Download maps before you leave pavement in the Highlands or the western mountains.
• The season is shorter than the map suggests. Many coastal businesses run from late spring to mid-fall only, and Route 1 in November is a lot of dark windows.
• Bring one more layer than the forecast justifies. Water temperature runs the coast, so a 78-degree inland afternoon can be 60 and blowing on a boat.

What to skip

Some honest subtraction. Thunder Hole at the wrong tide is nothing. The drive to Bass Harbor Head purely for the light, on a summer afternoon, is an hour of your life spent looking for parking. Old Orchard Beach's pier is a fairground, not a Maine experience, and people who came for the coast are often disappointed. And a single day trip from Portland to Acadia means six hours of driving for four hours of park — either stay over or leave it for the next trip.

Two more worth saying. Trying to see the whole coast in a week produces a trip made of parking lots; two regions done properly beat five done from the car. And the marquee lighthouses on a July afternoon are the least rewarding version of themselves — the same tower at seven in the morning, in fog, with nobody else on the path, is the photograph you actually wanted.

FAQ

What is the number one thing to do in Maine?

Acadia National Park, and it is not close. At 4.9 from 24,003 reviews it has more visitor feedback than the next fifteen attractions in our data put together. Give it at least two full days, and book a Cadillac Mountain summit road reservation before you arrive.

How many days do you need in Maine?

Five days covers the southern coast and Portland comfortably. A week gets you to the Midcoast as well. Ten days is what it takes to add Acadia without turning the drive into a wasted day. Under three days, stay south of Brunswick.

What is there to do in Maine when it rains?

The museums hold up: the Portland Museum of Art, the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, and Owls Head Transportation Museum near Rockland all rate 4.6 or better with over a thousand reviews each. Lighthouses in fog are also better than lighthouses in sun, and no one is on the cliff walks.

Is Maine worth visiting outside of summer?

September and early October are the best weeks of the year — warm water still, thin crowds, and foliage moving down from the north. Winter works if you are here for the mountains or for Portland's restaurants. Late fall is the one stretch to be careful with, since coastal towns shut down street by street.